‘Marketing excessive farm produce is a major challenge before farmers’

Speakers discuss challenges faced by farmers in marketing agricultural produce at NABARD project meeting in Agricultural University.

Speakers at a meeting on the NABARD project of “Strengthening FPOs through Good Agricultural Practices (GAP): Crop Diversification, Technology Transfer, Yield Gap Analysis and Value Chain Management” being held in the Agricultural University here said one of the major challenges before the farming community is incurring losses due to excessive arrival of agricultural produce into the market.

At the inaugural session of the two-day meet on Tuesday, Registrar and Director (Research) of the university P. Raghurami Reddy said that marketing the perishable agricultural produce such as flowers and vegetables, particularly tomatoes, was a complex problem and the farmer-producer organisations could play a key role reducing such risks with the use of modern technology and lesser use of fertilizers and pesticides in farming.

Director of Agricultural Marketing G. Lakshmi Bai said improving the quality of farm produce, diversity in production, cleaning, grading, drying, hygiene and purity would provide better marketing opportunities. The government was implementing a scheme to allow farmers to store their produce in the warehouses for six months.

ICAR-IIRR Director Raman Meenakshi, Dean of Agriculture Seema, Director (Extension) V. Sudharani and others, including the representatives of 10 FPOs from the erstwhile Nalgonda and Mahabubnagar district, attended the meeting.